As Blockchain Grows, Companies Look to Avert a Patent War

2018-06-19

The arrival of the smartphone triggered epic intellectual property battles across the world, as companies spent billions of dollars to assert monopolies over the new technology. The most high profile of those battles—Apple versus Samsung—began 10 years ago and is still rumbling in courtrooms today.

More recently, firms are obtaining patents for another seminal new technology known as blockchain, which relies on distributed ledgers to create tamper-proof records, and is being used in everything from shipping to finance to food safety.